“For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them…” Pretty straightforward. Everything in the universe, created by God, in six days.

It appears that it was pretty straightforward to the founders of our country, as our Declaration of Independence reads, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…” All men are created. All men are endowed by their Creator…

So, I ask, how have we gotten to the point that it is unconstitutional to teach in public schools that all men are created? From one of the founding tenets of our country to unconstitutional in less than 243 years. We certainly haven’t forgotten the word equal. We hear it every day. But it appears that we have forgotten, or would like to forget, the word that comes immediately before equal, created, and everything that implies. How did this happen?

Well, many would likely point to the fact that we have made much scientific progress since 1776. And, many would say that this scientific progress has disproved the Bible or has made the Bible’s creation account obsolete. This, however, is not only untrue, it is also not the cause of the drastic change in our country between its founding and the present.

The cause is something that took place long before the scientific progress mankind has made since the birth of our nation. Genesis chapters 1 and 2 describe how God created everything in six days. These chapters also describe how God created man, male and female, on the sixth day. They also state that God planted a garden and placed the man, and then the woman, in that Garden. And, in Genesis 2:16-17, God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.”

Then came the cause of the change that I described earlier that has taken place in our country since its inception. In Genesis 3:1, Satan, taking the form of a serpent, said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden?’” And, in verse 4, he said to her, “You will not surely die.”

But we just saw that God most certainly did say that. And, if they ate, they would surely die. Also, in Genesis 3:2-3, the woman confirms that God did indeed say that. So, what Satan was telling the woman was a lie.

The choice for the woman, and her husband who was with her was, were they going to believe God, or were they going to believe a lie? Well, they believed the lie, and they ate the fruit, and the consequences affected all mankind from that point forward. Romans 5:12 says, “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way, death came to all men, because all sinned.” This is how sin entered the realm of humanity, and death through sin. Exactly what God said would happen, happened.

This is the same choice we face today. Do we believe God, or do we believe a lie? Many years after that event in the garden, but many years before the founding of our country, the Apostle Paul wrote about unbelieving mankind in Romans 1:25, “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator…” This is how, and why, America got from where it was in 1776 to where it is today.

So, what should we do? God has spoken through the Bible. Believe Him. Hebrews 11:3 says, “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.” By His grace, and based on His love, He made a way for us to be free from sin and from death. Romans 5:17 says, “For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.”

Pat Hurton has lived in Red Bluff since 1989. He is a graduate of Shasta Bible College and has been a co-pastor at Sunrise Bible Fellowship since 2003. He retired from the CHP in 2018. Pat and his wife D’Lorah have four grown children and 13 grandchildren.